On Storytelling, Science-Fiction, and the Future

Notes on Instagram

I posted my first photo to Instagram late last night, after having used the platform unfortunately for years: let’s not apply scientific rigor, but I posit my following 50 people (mostly women) and never posting anything is the creepiest thing I do. Or, did, now. Blank page on creepiness. But it’s the first time I’ve thought about Instagram, on top of why I’d never uploaded anything. That’s twofold, that I don’t actually do anything to take pictures of, and plus, it’s a girl thing.

When I close my eyes and think “Instagram,” the first words that associate are: Kylie, lipstick, beach, sunset, selfie, Kim, Khloe, etc. I guess, Kourtney, too, and the rest. But that’s just it, right? Not only is this a girl space, it’s a worst girl space, though “worst girl” is awarded at participant-speed at this point. This makes me think it’s a perfect inroad. We have a platform people use to sketch their amateur Time Life profiles; a glimpse at the world through their eyes.

Their worlds and their discretion before those worlds are both significant. Sure, their moderating the narratives of their lives is less than truthful, but asks no more than our detecting an artist’s truth in a painting or a novel. It’s always moderated everywhere, and this artistic hand provides these Instastars and Instafriends that rarest of things: privacy in a digital age, for which Instagram is a flagship, one I kind of dig.